"lopes" poems
Through an open window, I hear
the Big Thompson's steady music
drifting up from the valley below.
May breezes and gentle rains
coax the snow-capped peaks
to surrender their alabaster cloaks
downslope into gathering streams.
Silhouetted by light from the waxing moon,
a cinnamon bear lopes along water’s edge,
pauses for a draught and meanders on.
A bull elk newly coifed with velvet antlers
folds his legs beneath its belly
and kneels into grasses beside a tranquil pond.
while the Big Thompson rushes on.
Spring beauties, calypso orchids and geraniums
shake off their winter's sleep and
dot every vagabond trail and verdant hill
while fresh new leaves adorn the aspen boughs.
The Big Thompson inexorably presses on
bound for rendezvous with time and space
and tumbles into the always patient sea.
© 2017 by Robert Charles Howard
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 8:57 AM UTC
I shall go away
To the brown hills, the quiet ones,
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling,
Sun-fired and drowsy!
My horse snuffs delicately
At the strange wind;
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs ***** the dust.
The road winds, straightens,
Slashes a marsh,
Shoulders out a bridge,
Then --
Again the hills.
Unchanged, innumerable,
Bowing huge, round backs;
Holding secret, immense converse:
In gusty voices,
Fruitful, fecund, toiling
Like yoked black oxen.
The clouds pass like great, slow thoughts
And vanish
In the intense blue.
My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways.
A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high.
The immensity, the spaces,
Are like the spaces
Between star and star.
The hills sleep.
If I put my hand on one,
I would feel the vast heave of its breath.
I would start away before it awakened
And shook the world from its shoulders.
A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence.
The hills open
To show a slope of poppies,
Ardent, noble, heroic,
A flare, a great flame of orange;
Giving sleepy, brittle scent
That stings the lungs.
A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance,
answering Beauty's voice . . .
The horse whinnies. I dismount
And tie him to the grey worn fence.
I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun;
And climb the rounded breast,
That flows like a sea-wave.
The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from
the flagellating glare.
I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes.
My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel,
it is like the body of another.
The air blazes. The air is diamond.
Small noises move among the grass . . .
Blackly,
A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane
Seeking the star-road,
Seeking the end . . .
But there is no end.
Here, in this light, there is no end. . .
3.1k
I wear the vale
and it weathers me
in silty slopes
in harsh-cut lines
it lopes off pieces
of my face.
it floods out my marshes
it clears me clean out
and sterile
I wear the vale
and it's worrisome folk
who take up issue.
"You're wearing the vale!
Wearying th' fields
with dead leaves, and dead things.
Don't you tell us
how to live."
Funny, it's not even sublime
how easy it is
to tell me.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 5:32 PM UTC
Bang, bang, bang, baaannggg
I dreamed I was dying and goin’ to hiphop heaven
Wow, what a dope sight it was to have seen.
Last night I was shot and arrived at hiphop heaven.
And you know who met me at the big bling gates?
The original kings of da hood themselves, Run DMC.
They said to me, they said, “Bro, the Big Dude of the
hood up here, has told us to show you around the crib.
So come with us.
Now standing on da corner is some of your favourite homies.
**** I was glad to see them, The Notorious B.I.G. and the maestro of rap Tupac Shakur.
I dreamed I was dead in hiphop heaven
Wow, what a dope sight it was to have seen.
They introduced me to Snoop Dog, and they showed me the Ghetto of Fame with all the gold chains and number one hits up upon da wall.
Then they said, “Bro, walk this way, there are a few more hiphop stars, that I know you’re dying to meet, they’re hangin’ for you.
“There they were chillin’ by the curbside and staring down at me - Eminem and AKA MCA.
Bang, bang, bang, baaannggg
I met all my heroes right from the get go
**** what a privilege to have finally met
Then I asked them, who else do you think will join y’all, uh, say twenty five years from now?
They handed me a book of sheet music covered with graffiti.
They named it the Hood 4 Life Book.
In it, were many names and some were already highlighted in black texta.
I began to scan the pages and saw names such as, Dolla,
Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD, Nipsey Hussle, Easy-E, Lisa Lopes, Nate Dogg, Lil Peep, Jam Master Jay, J Dilla, Proof, Soulja Slim, Big Hawk, Prodigy, Camoflauge, Natina Reed, Charizma, Bloodshed, Big Bank Hank and Dav E Crockett.
***
Dav E Crockett?
Oh, well, that's when I woke up, and I'm sorry I did, because
I always dream I’d end up in hiphop heaven
Wow, what a dope sight it would be, y’all be knowin’ what I mean?
Mar 12, 2020
Mar 12, 2020 at 10:46 AM UTC
freeborn mustang lopes
unchained throughout curtailed life
fur snared in barbed wire
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 12:23 PM UTC
At a stirring in the orchard, she sharply turns.
monument-still she watches, lopes on.
Her mottled grey more coyote-like than *****
The fiery orange long gone from her wasted frame,
Her once-bushed tail, now hairless, drooping.
An aged ***** in her last winter, moved to stalk
in daylight, up the orchard to the treeline,
Once the hill's best hunter; each year her kits
ferocious players near the now dry brook,
Does she dream, I wonder, of those springs?
Leave her now to time, deep-denned,
where the last sleep's call ends hunger,
hid from the season's creeping chill.
Better there to finish than a trapper's snare,
Better this quiet ending in the vixen's lair.
Apr 17, 2012
Apr 17, 2012 at 9:41 PM UTC
The Panther scales above the infirmity of the jungle
like a reverent vicar, in her mouth
she clutches an infant. To some this is
the most intoxicating world—so long as you don’t mind
a little ruse, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t consist of a flurry of happiness?
Below, game lopes abundantly as the ocean tributaries,
each frolicking along a distinctive course, not that
she ever really ruminates over them, or anything else.
The panther has never had to digest a fable,
though her existence propagates an analogous terror.
When predators raid her hearth, they remain
ephemeral, irrelevant – her insatiable hunger the only story
she has ever managed to revisit.
Your skin will never feel her eyes. I cannot say
she is wrong. Piously she prepares her supper,
with its meager, undeveloped vigor, erupting
a contented roar in the conversion of its properties.
She exists the product of her kind, the natural order her excuse
as she scales back above the inconsequence of the jungle
again, to do the same thing
(as I’d longed to do something, anything) perfectly.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 6:58 PM UTC
The collie, fur grayed and patchy, lopes away from his house,
Ostensibly bound for nowhere in particular,
Knowing only that it is that time, his time,
And, as he wanders away for to await that last solitary purpose,
Meanders past a pock-marked and rust-patched single-wide,
Occupied by a young woman (a girl, in truth)
Nursing a newborn, child whose father
Is one in a wide range of unpalatable options.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
They walk, the residue of some boy meets girl,
Along the quiet main street of an equally quiet town,
Utility poles garnished with benign, contented snowmen,
Low-hung five-pointed auguries strung with tinsel,
Brobodingnagian candy canes swaying rhythmically in the wind.
They have arrived at the unspoken yet mutually understood conclusion
That they have taken their particular accident of birth and geography
As far as such a thing may go, yet they walk hand-in-hand,
Fingers intertwined, though tentatively, in some interim rationale.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
On a hill above town, there is a rambling, low-slung edifice
Multiple-winged single-story octopus of a house
Well appointed though sparsely and diffidently decorated,
More hotel than home, decidedly transitory in form and function.
In one of the rooms, dimly lit with little ornamentation
Save a Charlie Brown-esque tree squatting forlornly on a bureau,
A woman is reading softly, almost mechanically,
As if it is a story she has read out loud countless times before,
To a man who is heeding, perhaps, though it is clear
That the act is more essential than the words on the page.
They have a daughter who would be there,
Sitting in a chair or on the edge of the bed,
Hands clasped, though in service of or supplication to nothing tangible,
But she is home with her toddler, a whirligig of a child
Who has found some hidden presents
And is tearing away the wrapping from the boxes,
Laughing unrestrainedly as he showers himself
In a red-green-gold ticker-tape maelstrom.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Dec 12, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 9:05 AM UTC
Kissinger's in the House today,
trailing choking ****** fumes
kicking aside limbless tiny bodies
too, too innocent by far,
all dripping entrails & shattering
dry bones gladly underfoot
as he lopes horrendously
all death rictus grin & such
as he once again justifies
to St Peter at the gates
the millions crushed, obliterated
blown into tiny misty red fragments
as he played his all-mighty diplomatic
history lessons on a helpless, distant
once green & fertile land.
Forgiveness? Ha!
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 12:57 PM UTC
A wolf stands firmly
Howling singular notes,
Reaching over the night.
The woodland animals
Hear the plaintif cry
As a lonely echo
Through the air.
We don't care,
But others cower nearby.
The abandoned wail ****** ears,
Confirming all their fears:
Something must die.
Scratching, arching
With fierce yellow eyes,
Snout pointing to the darkling sky,
He howls his hollow cry,
Sounding like his cousin's bark,
He lopes to his den,
Veiled in the dark,
Hoping his warnings
Were not in vain,
The wolf next night
Will wail again.
Jul 15, 2015
Jul 15, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
Cornish spring drips and
all growth becomes riddled with
desire for warmth,
ridden with need for having more.
Freshly risen, green
gets liquid-addiction, an invisible
draw makes sward
swoon for regular fixes of water.
Crafty Spring knows
plants crave doses so being fickle
he drops trickles used
to tease shoots upwards for fuel.
Whoresome he opens
cores formerly hidden, then the
illicit physician lopes
in and flippantly erases hopes.
Bold, he impregnates
the deep sleep of inactive nature,
forcing in secret wet
potions to unclothe closed petals.
Then he may withhold
his advances and allow winter's
return to bring nights
of freeze to show is own might.
Old Spring hangs around
to tickle ground's fancy yet Sol's
hard passion he fears
for at start of heat he disappears.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
I give this last note to Leo that he may race to you while it's words are fresh. He lopes across the night's great canvas with sufficient grace to draw your eye for beauty. Know that my last wish in this waking world is for you to dream all that is daring, and to wake on the morrow and see it in truth. I now bid you goodnight and farewell. We may speak again in the light but now the darkness creeps and my own adventures await.
With love,
Jul 22, 2014
Jul 22, 2014 at 1:02 PM UTC
Creed will breed from seed, a good deed to heed;
But greed like **** feeds as blended needs bleed,
Till hope elopes in lopes for naught to cope
And gropes on worn tightrope whence doubts still mope.
Would faith debate with fate 'fore night's too late,
Or should this date wait and postpone her bait?
God with His words became creations' Lord;
While Moses with rod, as David with sword...
Promises unforeseen, things I've not seen!
Unbelief, unseen; the one sin to win;
Yet these I believe and live to receive,
From Spirit that gives; whom I mustn't grieve.
Faith I hinged on substance of things hoped for;
Evidence of unseen or blur, naught more.
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 5:31 AM UTC
I still remember that day
Still remember that rainy day
Our First Proximity
Those raindrops and we under one umbrella
Still remember the connections made in lab
That connections connected my heart to yours
Still remember those experiments performed together
Fails laughed upon
Still remember waiting for each other to go home
Still remember travelling together home.
Sitting side-by-side
Still remember those games we played
You being my player 2
Those memories just refuse to fade
Still remember those last moment study we did together
Those late night messages of assignments,
And wishing goodnight after completion.
Still remember waiting for midnight to wish Happy Birthday!
Still remember the increasing distance that led us here
You failed, even I failed.
But those memories still refuse to fade...
©aston_lopes
May 2, 2018
May 2, 2018 at 1:52 PM UTC
Juan Marques Lopes
Juan Marques Lopes lives in Vain;
To move one day is his only wish.
Free himself from a poor life with his wife,
For he knows he can do better than this.
One hundred years have come and gone,
Since the day that he was born;
To a Shepard’s daughter on a farmers land. He was her only son.
Three decades ago he received a bite to the neck
And thought he would die from the blood loss.
For the pain to stop and to save his own life;
He said he'd sell his soul whatever the cost.
One moment of weakness and his soul was the Devils;
To do as he pleased, just to not die like this.
Freedom from death must come at a price;
For a vampires thirst craves the deadliest kiss.
Juan killed all his friends then he killed his own family;
To feed his thirst for blood and for power.
Three times a day, he must feed on their blood;
For he sold his soul to Satan, this is his last eternal hour.
(C)2005 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 7:04 AM UTC
in memory of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes
In hopes that your sleep
Will be the best ever
A sleep that's eternal
In hopes your soul be at rest.
First, hoping that you know Christ
Second, you recognized with others
In hopes your rest is at peace.
We will miss you
Your craziness
Your talent so grand
We will miss you dearly.
Liza you are loved
I pray your soul to be at rest.
30 April 2002
Jul 1, 2017
Jul 1, 2017 at 11:17 PM UTC